The Greenbelt Guardians have two upcoming workdays this fall that we’d love for you to come out and help us with:

On Saturday September 29th, National Public Lands Day, we’ll be working at the Gus Fruh access from 8:00 AM until noon. The plan, assuming it quits raining before then, is to repave the entire switchback entry trail with decomposed granite and StaLok binder. It needed work before the recent rains and needs it worse now afterwards. We’ve done repair work on various sections over the years, but we haven’t repaved the entire trail since 2005. It’s a big job and we’ll need all the help we can get!

Those of you who’ve helped us do this kind of work before know that we usually mix the DG and StaLok resin on site. Now we can buy it already mixed! That will speed things up considerably, but we’ll still need lots of folks to help get a small mountain of material down the trail, spread, and pack it.

We’re late getting organized – Sept 29th is less than 2 weeks away now! Please let us know as soon as you can if you’re able to volunteer with us that day by sending an email to Stan Ostrum at stan@sostrum.com.

We’ll have some other tasks available (invasives removal, trash pickup, etc.) for those who can’t do trail repair, but our focus will be on getting the trail work completed. Breakfast tacos will be provided!

On Saturday November 3rd from 9:00 until noon, we’ll be working at the Homedale access. That will be the Austin Parks Foundation’s Fall It’s My Park Day, and our focus will be on invasive plant removal. Sign up will be online via APF’s GivePulse system in early October. We’ll send out a reminder with more details then, but please go ahead and put it on your calendar now!

If it sounds like a lot of hard work, well it is, but we have fun too. You’ll get a good workout, meet cool people, spend time in a beautiful setting, and have something to show for your efforts that makes the greenbelt experience better for everyone. We’re looking forward to getting out again and giving back and we hope that a lot of you can join us!